On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science

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Princeton University Press, 1 feb 2010 - 176 páginas

An in-depth look at scientific fraud

Fraud in science is not as easy to identify as one might think. When accusations of scientific misconduct occur, truth can often be elusive, and the cause of a scientist's ethical misstep isn't always clear. On Fact and Fraud looks at actual cases in which fraud was committed or alleged, explaining what constitutes scientific misconduct and what doesn't, and providing readers with the ethical foundations needed to discern and avoid fraud wherever it may arise.

In David Goodstein's varied experience—as a physicist and educator, and as vice provost at Caltech, a job in which he was responsible for investigating all allegations of scientific misconduct—a deceptively simple question has come up time and again: what constitutes fraud in science? Here, Goodstein takes us on a tour of real controversies from the front lines of science and helps readers determine for themselves whether or not fraud occurred. Cases include, among others, those of Robert A. Millikan, whose historic measurement of the electron's charge has been maligned by accusations of fraud; Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons and their "discovery" of cold fusion; Victor Ninov and the supposed discovery of element 118; Jan Hendrik Schön from Bell Labs and his work in semiconductors; and J. Georg Bednorz and Karl Müller's discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, a seemingly impossible accomplishment that turned out to be real.

On Fact and Fraud provides a user's guide to identifying, avoiding, and preventing fraud in science, along the way offering valuable insights into how modern science is practiced.

 

Índice

Setting the Stage
1
In the Matter of Robert Andrews Millikan
29
Bad News in Biology
51
Codifying Misconduct Evolving Approaches in the 1990s
59
The Cold Fusion Chronicles
69
Fraud in Physics
97
The Breakthrough That Wasnt Too Good to Be True
107
What Have We Learned?
127
Caltech Policy on Research Misconduct
135
Acknowledgments
147
Notes
149
Index
155
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Sobre el autor (2010)

David Goodstein is the Frank J. Gilloon Distinguished Teaching and Service Professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. His books include Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil and Feynman's Lost Lecture.

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